Chapter 10 #3
‘One. Two. One. Two. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Saturday night, which means one thing and one thing only .
.?. it’s karaoke night!’ he announced, much to the crowd’s delight.
Luca’s eyes were fixed firmly on my face, his pupils dancing with amusement.
‘Don’t be shy, we’re taking sign-ups at the bar, and to kick us off tonight, we have Jenny Thompson. Jenny, the stage is yours!’
My stomach fell out the bottom of me. I turned slowly towards Luca, my face like thunder.
‘What did you do?’ I hissed angrily. But the crooked smirk on his face told me he knew exactly what he was doing.
‘Uh-oh, I’d take cover if I were you, mate,’ Joe warned, grabbing a cocktail menu and pretending to hide behind it.
The bartender looked over in my direction.
‘I think someone’s getting cold feet over here.
Can I get some love in the room for Jenny, please, let’s see if we can’t get her up on the stage.
Jenny. Jenny. Jenny. ’ More and more people started chanting my name, over and over.
Even Joe joined in. God, this was an actual living nightmare.
Luca doubled over with laughter, gesturing to the chanting crowd. ‘The people have spoken.’
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Kristina standing behind me, shoulders back, surgically enhanced boobs forward. Her lips looked extra glossy. As though she’d just this second applied a fresh coat of lip gloss.
‘Jenny, they’re calling you,’ she said, fluttering her eyelashes at Luca.
‘Yes, thank you, Kristina, but there’s been some kind of a mix up. Excuse me—’ I barked at the bartender.
‘What’s the matter? Scared?’ The way Luca’s lips pressed together to keep from laughing made my teeth grind.
As though he thought he’d already won. Well, we’d see about that.
I grabbed Luca’s whiskey tumbler, downing the entire thing and trying not to wince as the neat amber liquid burnt my throat.
I took a step towards him, my breathing heavy, my mouth mere inches from his ear.
He smelt of old leather and the faint, salty undertone of sweat.
‘You should be the one who’s scared, you’ll be out of a job after this.
’ I smirked, Luca’s whiskey propelling me towards the stage with a false sense of confidence.
But when someone thrust a microphone into my hands, the heat of a spotlight landing on my face, my legs turned to jelly.
I raised a hand against the glare, squinting through the sea of bodies towards the bar where Kristina was trying to show Luca how she could tie a bow in the stem of a cocktail cherry using only her tongue.
My heart was beating so loudly that I was certain the microphone would pick it up, broadcasting my anxiety for the whole room to hear.
But then I spotted him. Leaning against one of the pillars, hair flopping all over the place as he grinned encouragingly from behind his glasses.
I stared imploringly at Joe, wishing it was him up here instead of me.
He was so much better at karaoke than I was.
Joe gave a small shrug of his shoulders, as if he were agreeing with me.
Shania Twain’s ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ blasted from the speakers behind me, and I mumbled the opening lyrics into the microphone, my voice lost before it even reached the front row of the crowd, none of whom were paying any attention to who was on the stage.
None except Luca, that is, who’d somehow escaped Kristina and fought his way through the throngs of people for a front-row seat to my public humiliation.
I winced as the microphone let out a jarring, high-pitched noise and I saw Luca’s shoulders judder with silent laughter.
But there’s something about hearing Shania Twain sing that iconic opening line that flips some sort of internal switch in every woman, and I suddenly felt like I could do anything.
Climb a mountain. Smash through a brick wall.
And most definitely wipe that stupid, smug smile off Luca Patel’s face.
As the beat kicked in, I turned so my back was to the audience, purposefully dropping one shoulder so my cardigan slid provocatively down my right arm before landing in a pool at my feet.
A wolf whistle echoed throughout the room and by the time I turned back around, the crowd had swarmed closer, a hundred faces now fully invested in the show.
I pulled the microphone free from the stand, strutting across the stage with a newfound confidence.
I belted out the next verse, raising a game-on eyebrow at Luca as I whipped off my shot glass necklace and twirled it around in the air.
The crowd cheered as I found my mark, Luca recoiling backwards before cocking his head with a grin, a silent touché of acknowledgement.
I dropped to the floor, straddling the microphone stand like a prize thoroughbred as I paused, waiting for Luca’s eyes, which were currently somewhere around my thighs, to catch up with my face.
He ruffled the back of his head, those dark eyes smouldering with something dangerous and electrifying when they sparked with mine.
I grinned, the thrill of victory coursing through my veins at the look of utter disbelief on his face.
The crowd went wild as I jumped off the stage, Alyssa and the other hens fangirling like delirious teenagers at a Taylor Swift concert in the corner as I worked my way along the line, microphone lead trailing along behind me.
Luca was the only one still seated; everyone else was on their feet, the floor vibrating with a hundred dancing revellers belting out Shania right along with me.
I stopped in front of him, circling his chair slowly like a lioness stalking her prey.
All the women around me hollered in solidarity, cheering me on as I planted a shoe on the seat of Luca’s chair, forcing his legs apart to avoid being impaled by my stiletto.
His gaze lingered briefly on my ankle, lips parting as if he were playing the part of some man in a Jane Austen novel, before dragging his eyes up my bare leg, pausing for a second too long on the scooped neckline of my dress.
Mr Darcy, my arse. He shifted in his seat as I continued to move my hips against the side of his chair, his visible discomfort like fuel to my already-raging fire.
His chest heaved beneath my fingers as I traced a slow, lazy pattern across the cotton of his t-shirt, his jaw jutting to one side in a hard lock.
‘I know what you’re doing. You might have won all these other people over—’ he gestured to the jeering crowd, his grip tightening resolutely on the arms of the chair, ‘—but it’s not going to work on me.’
I shrugged one shoulder in a way that said I knew otherwise, noticing his left heel bouncing to the rhythm of the beat.
I whipped the microphone cable hard against the sticky floor with a sharp crack, but still Luca didn’t move.
As I took half a step back, I watched that dimple appear in his hitched right cheek.
The mark of someone who thought they’d won.
The corner of my own mouth ticked as I lassoed the excess cable round my head, the roar of the crowd building to a crescendo as I landed the loop over Luca’s head, pulling it taut.
For a beat, nothing happened. His jaw shifted to the other side, some silent negotiation passing between us as neither one of us backed down.
But then he broke into a grin, holding his hands up in surrender and climbing to his feet.
The crowd surged around us until there was nowhere else to go, our bodies forced together, the pressure of his hips against mine.
It felt strange to feel another man’s body against my own, but I found myself leaning into it, a lightning bolt of electricity searing through me whereever we were touching.
Right thigh. Hip bone. Left pinky finger as it grazed against the tear in his jeans.
My boobs when someone jostled behind Luca and he stumbled even closer, my chest pressed hard against his.
His hand found my wrist, twirling me around as I launched into the second verse.
‘I’ve gotta hand it to you, Thompson, you never fail to surprise me,’ he yelled in my ear, his breath hot and sticky against the nape of my neck.
He threw his head back and laughed, hair in disarray, skin glistening with sweat.
My stomach flipped traitorously. I hadn’t seen him smile like that before.
Warm and genuine, his eyes melting into two pools of sweet chocolate.
There was something intoxicating about it.
Something so strong it was hard to look away.
To ignore the heat that had started swirling between my thighs.
With only one way to go, I stepped back onto the safety of the stage as the final chorus kicked in.
My eyes scanned the dimly lit room, searching the shadows for Joe.
But he was nowhere to be seen, the pillar he’d previously been leaning against now occupied by a drunk couple who looked like they were attempting to eat each other’s faces off.
Something cold washed over me and the bubble in which Joe and I existed together popped, disappearing into the stale air of the bar, as though it had never even existed.
I turned away sharply, but my heel snagged on a tangle of cable and the next thing I knew, I was hurtling face-first off the front of the stage.